followed diet and exercise orders ini- tially, then abandoned their lifestyle changes after a few weeks – failing to follow through even when their lives depended on it, while other patients maintained their discipline. In looking for rational reasons for this seemingly irrational behavior, he noted that, even when patients des- perately wanted to follow through, willpower may have waned when they needed it most.
“How many salespeople are out
there who really, really want to increase their income and perfor- mance – for all kinds of reasons – but, year after year, they don’t follow through?” he asks. “We’re saying that the reason is that they’re look- ing in the wrong place for the solu- tion. The wrong place, essentially, is willpower and self-discipline. They don’t work.” Sure, you might enjoy the occasional triumph of will, but, as a follow-through tool, it’s unreliable, and consistent success demands consistent follow-through.
INNER CHILD Few people always feel like doing the right thing, and there’s a good reason. As the consultant explains it, we all have a split personality. Our every move is guided by two inner systems – one primitive, one state-of-the-art. The two systems do not speak the same language or communicate with one another, and, while the state-of- the-art system guides us to do the logical thing for long-term benefit, the primitive one leads us into temptation by pressuring us to do what we most want to do right now.
He says, “The best metaphor for this is a car with two steering wheels and two drivers” – The Wise One and Thor. “The Wise One figures out what to do for long-term benefit and steers the car in that direction. But Thor has no destination at all. He’s like a three-year-old child, totally into the moment, totally into his physical needs, his five senses, and very per- sistent and powerful when he wants
something. When The Wise One says, ‘Improve your closing skills,’ or ‘Read your new sales literature,’ and Thor says, ‘I want to go to the movies,’ Thor wins even though he’s stupid, because he’s stronger.”
POWERFUL PAIR
Lest you think that Thor is evil and determined to foil your every attempt at success, the consultant emphasizes that he really isn’t good or bad – but simply self-absorbed. And, while you can’t overpower him, you can out- smart him. If you know how to use his power, the same Thor that keeps you from getting anything done one day can drive you to new heights of productivity the next.
“If you set things up right,” he says, “Thor will help you be a peak performer. And that’s what’s so exciting about how these strategies work. When you do set your environ- ment up the right way, you’ll find Thor yelling and pushing to get you to do what’s right, and you achieve incredible things.” To hit on just the right solution, keep it simple and stupid. You may have to do some silly things to make Thor cooperate, but not following through on tasks that will make you successful is equally absurd. “The solution is to take a simple action so Thor and The Wise One are both steering in the same direction at the same time. So, in other words, you feel like doing what you know is best. They become a team so you have the power of Thor and the brains of The Wise One working together.”
SMART STRATEGIES The pair offers several strategies to help you make Thor your follow- through friend. The first, creating compelling reasons, shows that using the “wrong” reasons to follow through works better than using the right ones. For example, motivating yourself to work late because you want a raise in three months is like talking to the wrong decision maker
on a sales call. You’re trying to appeal to a force that has intelligence but no power. The Wise One wants the raise but Thor wants to go home now – and Thor is the one with the decision- making muscle. To create compelling reasons that will spur you to action, they advise considering less logical but more powerful motivators. “The idea here is that there’s a big
difference between the right rea- sons for doing something and the truly compelling reasons,” they say. “Compelling reasons are immedi- ate, certain, and personal, whereas the right reasons tend to be logical and long-term but have very little im- mediate impact.”
The consultant illustrates his point with the story of a salesperson who called him about a year ago after hearing him speak. For years, the salesperson had failed to follow through on his resolution to get up at 5:15 in the morning to study technical material. The salesperson, who had two very young children, had great logical reasons for get- ting up to study, but he failed until he created a truly compelling reason for himself. He decided to set one alarm clock in his bedroom for 5:12 and another one in the kids’ room for 5:15. When the alarm went off in his room, he would have a compelling reason to get up immediately – to go to his children’s room and turn off the second alarm clock before it went off at 5:15 and woke them up. “Once he set up a compelling reason that made him feel like doing the right thing, he didn’t have to rely on willpower anymore,” he says. He recommends creating your own compelling reasons by review- ing “when you’ve been highly moti- vated in the past. Write down times in your life when you’ve been really into following through. Next to those instances, write down what was moti- vating you at the time. It will often be something kind of silly, but that’ll give you some clues.” In other words, if last quarter you were really motivated
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